To Stay in Reality: Susan Sanford Blades interviews Jake Kennedy

Jake Kennedy

Fiction Editorial Board member Susan Sanford Blades talks with Jake Kennedy, whose story “Pendant” appears in our winter issue #229. They discuss being pulled towards writing prose, the post-patriarchal universe the story is set in, and the difficulty of locating anything genuine outside the influence of mass culture.

Read an excerpt of "Pendant" here.

Jake Kennedy knows very well that you can’t mix Cowboy Junkies with Louise Bourgeois with Nancy Sinatra with Maya Deren without some kind of explaining to do but still—still; Jake Kennedy tries to tell his mind to tell his fingers to “initiate a gentle pinching” to get the fly out of the coffee as if that’s altogether easier than encouraging the coffee to shake itself free from the fly; Jake Kennedy aspires to be as demonstrative as the five-year-old he just heard say to the other five-year-old, “I’m your best friend and you never remember my name!”; Jake Kennedy still believes in art but nowadays not quite as much as the toaster he used to have that would pop up a slice and spin it a little in the air before catching it again in the other slot. Okay, okay. Jake Kennedy is—for real—grateful for your time.


My reading of your story, “Pendant,” is that it takes place in an alternate, post-patriarchal universe where men bob from trees or other perches and perhaps might be set free once they acknowledge and understand the harm they’ve done to the women in their lives. In any case, I love this world you’ve created and I’m wondering how you decided to address the story of a girl dealing with her father’s behaviour in this particular way.

Susan, first of all, thanks so much for taking the time to ask me these wonderful questions. I’m very grateful to you! And thanks for saying that about the world there in “Pendant.” It’s just as you say: I was trying to hallucinate a universe in which certain feminist adjustments have been made to the physics, eh? I was trying to imagine, in part, a space in which the profundities and visions of certain women artists—Louise Bourgeois, Maya Deren, Madeline Gins, Jan Ash Poitras—had prevailed. The idea of the image of floating men was also suggested by an early Cowboy Junkies album entitled “Whites Off Earth Now.”

In the story, Deren wants her father to tell her a memory of his life with her mother, who is now dead, but he feigns forgetfulness and supplies her with plotlines to films and books instead. What elements of the male psyche were you trying to get at there?

Again, thank you for this stirring question! I had been wondering—and continue to wonder—how much of my own masculinity is characterized by tech, and sports, and media, and algorithms. So I think Deren’s longing for a single authentic memory from her father is also a way to express a general lament about the difficulties for myself (western white dudes broadly?) to locate anything lived or genuine or loving outside the influence of mass/tech-obsessed culture. I reckon this next thing sounds high-falutin but I think the story found some of its shape, too, as a response to the disturbing rise of fascism... or maybe that fascism was always there? But I wasn’t following any thesis really so much as just trying to attend to what I could glimpse in this world.

You’ve published four books and two chapbooks of poetry, as well as prose pieces, visual pieces, and videos. How do you decide which format you’re going to work with for a particular topic you’re interested in or piece of writing you want to create?

I think I think (I think?!) in terms of images but sometimes those images seem tied to hunches about character and maybe that’s what suggests to me that a piece might be more prose-based rather than more poetry-ish? And I know this is corny but I do like how mysterious it all is… like, you’re not quite sure what you’re making so you just give over and follow it. Maybe it’s all just a goofy extension of kids’ play!? I like that line from Lynda Barry about how we create a fantasy world not to escape reality but to stay… truth, Lynda B!

Following from that, are you working on a collection of short fiction right now?

I would love to publish a collection of short fiction and doodles… and then I reread the last word in that previous sentence and it’s clear to me why Knopf never calls.

Who are some Canadian writers and/or what are some books by Canadian writers that you’re really excited about?

Kristjana Gunnars and Erín Moure should each be as famous as Anne Carson, shouldn’t they?!

As writers, I think we’re always straddling that time/money divide, and it’s hard to hit that happy place where you have just enough of both. When balancing your teaching at Okanagan College with your writing, how do you structure your days or perhaps your years so that you work writing time into your schedule?

Again, Susan, I’m so grateful for your thoughtful questions! I have to say that right now I’m struggling a bit to find that happy place. I used to write poems early, early mornings but I’ve been pulled the last few years more directly towards prose and now I feel I need more time for that kind of imagining… so I’ve been thinking of myself most days as “taking notes” or “waiting” until I can find longer stretches of time to drop down in and wander around. But I can’t make any excuses, eh? I just have to work harder no doubt! Less pebble kicking and more pad scratching! Or, as Sharon Thesen says, onward! Thank you again for your rad questions and time, Susan! I hope your own work is going so well!

 

Susan Sanford Blades

Susan Sanford Blades